ERIC ED565150: The Euroversity Good Practice Framework (EGPF) and Its Application to Minority Languages and Elder Learners

EUROO

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university of
groningen

The Euroversity Good Practice
Framework (EGPF) and its application
to minority languages and elder learners

Gary Motteram 1 , Ton Koenraad 2 , Hanna Outakoski 3 ,

Kristi Jauregi 4 , Judith Molka-Danielsen 5 , and Christel Schneider 6

Abstract. The Euroversity Network project (2011-2014) has built a Good Practice
Framework (GPF) that functions as a heuristic for course and activity designers
wishing to develop courses and other materials for use in a range of virtual worlds.
This framework has been tested with a number of courses during the running of the
project and the aim is that it will be useful for new designers as a starting point for
their own ideas development. The GPF is still open for adjustment and negotiation
and this paper shows how two new case studies that were not the direct focus of
the project, minority languages and elder learners, help to expose some of the
framework’s weaknesses, but also many of its strengths. These case studies illustrate
that a tool like the GPF can provide an effective mediating function for a variety of
courses and other activity in virtual worlds.

Keywords: course development, good practice framework, virtual worlds, minority
languages, teaching older learners.

1. University of Manchester; gary.motteram@manchester.ac.uk.

2. TELLConsult; ton.koenraad@gmail.com.

3. Umea University; hanna.outakoski@samiska.umu.se.

4. University of Utrecht; k.jauregi@uu.nl.

5. Molde University College; Judith.Molka-Danielsen@himolde.no.

6. CSiTrain; chris.schneider@web.de.

How to cite this article: Motteram, G., Koenraad, T., Outakoski, H., Jauregi, K., Molka-Danielsen, J., & Schneider, C.
(2014). The Euroversity Good Practice Framework (EGPF) and its application to minority languages and elder learners.
In S. Jager, L. Bradley, E. J. Meima, & S. Thouesny (Eds), CALL Design: Principles and Practice ; Proceedings
of the 2014 EUROCALL Conference, Groningen, The Netherlands (pp. 241-247). Dublin: Research-publishing.net.
doi: 1 0. 1 4705/rpnet.20 1 4.000225

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Gary Motteram, Ton Koenraad, Hanna Outakoski, Kristi Jauregi, Judith Molka-Danielsen...

1. Introduction

The Euroversity Network project (2011-2014) has aspirations to bring together
practitioners of any discipline to develop and run educational courses and activities
in virtual spaces, e.g. Open Sim, Second Life, Minecraft, etc. (Molka-Danielsen,
Mundy, Hadjitassou, & Stefanelli, 2012). The project, however, does not exclude
the use of non-3D tools like desktop video conferencing, or more conventional
Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs). The expectation is that these tools will be
used in combination to support each other; exploiting their particular affordances
(Conole & Dyke, 2004). At the core of the project is an exploration of the process
of course design and development. This network project builds on the outcomes
of previous European language projects like NIFLAR and AVALON and reaches
forward to other ones like CAMELOT and T1LA.

In the initial stages, the Euroversity Network project used case studies from the
earlier projects to build a draft GPF for course design in virtual worlds; this draft
framework was then tested with the development of new courses which were then
also trialled. The draft framework was finally adapted and updated following the
evaluation received from running these new courses. Further case studies were
then based on these newly tried courses. The case studies and the framework can
be found on the Euroversity wiki 7 .

1.1. Evaluation and feedback

The evaluation and feedback were based on data collected from running a number
of courses developed taking the GPF as a reference across a range of disciplines,
including languages, economics, sciences, anthropology and game design.
Feedback was collected via questionnaires that were distributed both to the course
instructors and the students. Interviews were also conducted with a number of
instructors. A full analysis of the data is ongoing.

Following on from this initial trial period, we now offer two additional areas that
have considered the use of the framework, since its initial drafting and revision.
These are (1) minority languages and (2) the recognition of the affordances and
constraints that virtual worlds offer for the teaching of such languages. The second
area of application is that of age and disability. This initial paper will focus on a
brief summary of the explorations of these course designers.

7. http://euroversity.pbworks.eom/w/page/52279279/Euroversity

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2. Two case studies

2.1. Indigenous and minority languages in virtual 3D learning spaces

Endangered indigenous languages, such as North Sami, and minority languages
such as Basque, are potential beneficiaries of online teaching (Outakoski, 2014).
This is due to the fact that the teaching of these languages often involves smaller
student groups, who can be widely distributed, low speaker density communities,
and language stigma of various kinds. However, the presence of lesser-spoken
language communities and their practitioners in virtual worlds is negligible.

In the context of Euroversity, an exploratory study was carried out in order to
find out whether (and how) teachers of Basque do use virtual environments,
particularly 3D virtual worlds, in their teaching and what their perceptions
are about using virtual environments in education. A questionnaire was sent
to Basque schools, Basque institutions, European universities where Basque is
being taught, and Basque cultural institutions around the world. In the end, 38
teachers of Basque completed the survey. The results show that most teachers
(85%) were not familiar with 3D virtual worlds at all; only two teachers reported
to sometimes use Second Life in their teaching but they offered no further
information about what they did and how they used Second Life. As for the
use of other virtual environments, 36% of the teachers reported to use Moodle
(very) frequently in their courses, and 30% use Facebook (very) frequently;
however, the most popular digital application was YouTube: 41.7% of teachers
reported to use it. A 5-point Likert scale was used to measure teachers’ views on
the relevance of integrating virtual environments in education. As can be seen in
Table 1, teachers were positive about the integration of virtual environments in
their teaching and would like to know more about the pedagogical affordances
these virtual environments offer to enrich the teaching of Basque. The GPF
together with (virtual) training sessions might be a very good start for these
teachers to develop their pedagogical skills, yet the fact that the GPF is only
available in English might constitute a big problem for most of them.

While the Euroversity GPF (EGPF) is of potential value in course design for
indigenous and minority languages, one immediate barrier is the choice of English
as the single common language of the framework. This is an infrastructural
obstacle in the same way as would be the access to modern computers with updated
graphic cards, fast Internet connection and adequate support (both pedagogical and
technical). These problems cease to be an issue if human and financial resources
are invested both in a multilingual framework and to local or regional support of

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the educational programs that require the use of virtual worlds in education. If the
infrastructural problems are overcome, then the framework itself will be the engine
for developing new pedagogical models and solutions for teaching and learning in
virtual environments.

Table 1. Teachers of Basque (iV=36) about the relevance of teaching in virtual
worlds. 5 point Likert scale (1: strongly disagree / 5: strongly agree)

Items

Mean

SD

Teaching in virtual worlds is a hot topic.

4

0.8

I am interested and would like to know more about teaching in virtual worlds.

4.2

0.7

I think teaching in virtual worlds can enhance teaching different aspects of Basque.

4.1

0.8

I would like more information about the educational possibilities
of the integration of virtual worlds in language teaching.

4.2

0.8

I would like to collaborate with others in developing a curriculum
for the teaching of Basque in virtual worlds.

3.4

1.1

It is important to reach students who cannot attend regular classes.
In this sense virtual worlds may facilitate access to education.

4.3

0.7

Virtual environments for teaching seem interesting but I think that integration
is difficult because of the technical aspect.

3.3

1.2

If we now consider the Sami and the Basque cases in particular, it seems unlikely
that the infrastructural obstacles would be the only reason why these groups are
so imperceptible in virtual educational environments in general. And indeed, in
both cases some of the problems besides infrastructure have to do with users’
lack of time (work overload), adequate technical skills or knowledge of the
different 3D teaching environments, or with the rigidity of the teaching programs
(course design and curriculum). Such structural challenges ask more from the
educational system and are sometimes harder to tackle than the infrastructural
challenges.

Indigenous contexts are also often bound to a certain ‘place’ (Kuokkanen, 2009,
p. 95; McCarty, Nicholas, & Wyman, 2012), such as traditions, ideologies,
identities and locations that determine where one belongs. Language and traditional
knowledge are also often seen as collective heritage that are held sacred and are
in need of protection. When we view the potential that the new, versatile and open
virtual learning spaces offer to learners and teachers against the perception of
accepted knowledge transfer within an indigenous community, then it seems that

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the openness and novelty of the learning space, although being its best assets, are
also at the same time some of the main reasons why indigenous communities might
remain reluctant to establish educational presence in virtual environments.

In the Basque case, virtual educational environments might rather be seen as
offering yet another “expanded dimensio[n] for the creation and re-creation of
ethnicity and carr[y] the potential to unite virtually what is impossible to unite
physically” (Totoricaguena, 2003, p. 177). And although the educational sector and
practitioners are still only learning about the potential of virtual learning spaces,
the “community is expanding into virtual reality” (Totoricaguena, 2003, p. 178).
For example, the Basque Cultural Institute has plans of creating a culture centre,
Artean (EKE-ICB), in Second Life. It is therefore rather the structural than the
epistemological reasons that are behind the invisibility of Basque educators and
learners in virtual environments.

We find that the obstacles experienced by users of computer assisted learning models
such as infrastructure or lack of information can, to some extent, be overcome and
the EGPF has been helpful here. On the other hand, obstacles experienced by, for
instance, an indigenous learning community may involve so many compounding
factors independent from the educational context that providing a course design
or examples of good practice is not enough to attract the community to the virtual
learning environment.

2.2. Designing a social communicative space

for learning for the elderly in virtual worlds

This case study explores the opportunities and challenges of designing a virtual
social communicative space for (language) learning for the target group of elderly
learners. Although in general, society identifies “elderly” as age 65 and older, there
is a great range of abilities and (physical and cognitive) limitations within this age
group (Merriam, 2001) that would make categorisation by age alone meaningless.
Flence, to arrive at useful recommendations to make VLEs more accessible for
elderly learners, the factors need to be identified that distinguish sub-groups in this
population segment by types of impairments.

On the elderly use of ICT in general (PC, Internet, mobile devices), the authors
report research showing that it has increased considerably over the last six years.
The motivation for the use of virtual technologies for the elderly appears to be
as diverse as for any group in society, as some of the findings show: reduction of
loneliness (Sawyerr & Pinkwart, 2011), situated learning and gaining experiences

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Gary Motteram, Ton Koenraad, Hanna Outakoski, Kristi Jauregi, Judith Molka-Danielsen...

in a safe place (Falconer, 2014), and compensation of limited mobility in the
physical world (Eliot, Rost, & Singh, 2013).

To define design considerations particularly for the elderly population segment,
data were collected through an interview with A. Krueger, founder of Virtual Ability
Inc. and the Virtual Ability Island (VA) in Second Life was explored. The authors
undertook two tours on VA. In one guided tour, Krueger (20 1 3 ) pointed out specific
(features of) builds, the related application of universal design principles, as
suggested by Extension, America’s Research-based Learning Network (2013),
and the theory of andragogy. The second tour, of a more exploratory nature,
led by Professor Waller, an expert in the field of Augmentative and Alternative
Communication (AAC), was also recorded.

Relating the analysis of these experiences and observations to the Euroversity
GPF, the authors present a number of questions that should be asked and answered
by module designers to define considerations for a Target Group (TG) of elderly
population. The GPF-related topics include aims/objectives, technical issues and
support, interaction, risks and world related technical issues and post module
evaluation.

Drawing from the suggested answers to these questions, several abilities and
limitations factors are identified that can influence the preferred use of an
interface (the interaction with the Second Life browser in this case). For example,
for impaired vision ability, the availability of recorded sound clips and snap-to
signboards that fill the screen are suggested.

3. Conclusions

This paper has shown that the Good Practice Framework has significant values
for the design and development of various kinds of courses and activities in
virtual worlds. The case studies discussed here show that there are still issues with
the framework when it moves into new realms, but that in both cases there are
positive attributes that make the EGPF of value to a broad community of materials
developers. While the Euroversity Network project itself did not focus specifically
on language learning, it can be seen that there are definite reasons to make use of it
for the design of language courses and other related activities.

Acknowledgements. We would like to thank all of the teachers and students who
have taken part in the design, development and use of the different courses that
have been used to collect data on the framework. This project has been funded with

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The Euroversity Good Practice Framework (EGPF) and its application to minority languages...

support from the European Commission. This publication reflects the views only of
the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may
be made of the information contained therein.

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